


Certainties And Doubts

by Eustacia Vye (eustaciavye)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Harm to Children, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Red Room, comic canon incorporated
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-10
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-04-30 22:03:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,535
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5181317
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eustaciavye/pseuds/Eustacia%20Vye
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The twenty-eight girls of the Red Room were highly trained, highly skilled, dangerous and deadly. If they had been isolated, the little inconsistencies wouldn't have added up to anything important. As it was, they had <i>doubts.</i> And then the doubts became absolute certainties. <i>They had to get out.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gaining Awareness

**Author's Note:**

> Art done by [nervouscatcolor](http://nervouscatcolor.tumblr.com), [themurderingbutterfly](http://themurderingbutterfly.tumblr.com) and [natclia](http://natclia.tumblr.com/). Inspired by the prompt [Natasha wasn't the only Black Widow who survived the collapse of the Red Room. Are the others her allies and sisters? Or something else entirely?](http://romanoff-bb.livejournal.com/1092.html?thread=5444#t5444)
> 
> Hover text for the Russian; please correct me if I screwed anything up!

God, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts. –Sylvia Plath

 

 

The mission was completed with little fanfare; the mark's death wouldn't be noticed for hours, long after the assassin was gone and pulled back in by her handler. The businessman had called her Anya, had played with the dyed blonde hair and elegantly clad body, both knowing she was younger than she had told him. That made it easier to slide the stiletto hidden in her wrist cuff into his heart, the sheets and mattress soaking up the rich heartsblood and keeping the mess contained and off of her dress once she slid it back on. Then came the heels and a black wig that had been hidden in the lining of the thick fur coat she wore. She had no purse, no need for one.

Ivan Petrovich Bezukov smiled as the girl slid into the passenger seat of the waiting car four blocks away from the hotel. "Well, Доченька?"

"Completed as instructed, sir," she replied in crisp tones. "папуля," she relented at his expression, using a less familiar form than he had.

"Very good, Natalia Alianovna," he murmured. "I knew you had a right to your name."

She kept her eyes straight ahead and her expression blank. Younger girls still in the early stages of training were referred to by ranking. They had no names. It was only graduating out of the early stages that let girls have codenames and actual names. Getting her name had been a point of pride. She was worthy of training, worthy of the attention Mother Russia gave her and her fellow trainees. They had to protect her from her enemies, and could only do that if they passed all the tests, made top marks, completed the missions.

She was Natalia Alianovna Romanova, first of her name, the one with the highest marks in the program. It was a far cry from the early days, when she was Rank E and would have been used as training fodder for the older girls. Pain had her voice then. Strength failed her. Endurance had been lacking. All she had was beauty and stubbornness, both of which would never have let her survive for long. But nearly escaping once had taught her the price of failure, and the bounty that recognition and usefulness could bring.

The program did not suffer fools for long.

They were both silent as Ivan drove back through winding streets to the outpost they were currently staying in. "You always perform to the letter of our expectations. Your missions are completed with the best scores."

Because everything in the program was a competition. She and the other girls were always put at odds, having to compete for resources, the best assignments, the best trainers. Useless girls were culled from the program and used as target practice for higher ranking girls that weren't quite ready for their level of training. The academic work was a given, but not all the girls did as well with the physical training, target practice and assignments outside the complex.

"Thank you, папуля," she murmured when his hand came down on her shoulder in an approximation of paternal pride. Inside, she recoiled from his touch and loathed him and all the other handlers in the program. Ivan wasn't the worst of them, but he still controlled her and her future, and could direct her anywhere he wanted her to go.

The girls in the program had little to no choices at all.

"You may rest. Our pickup time is 0400."

She nodded sharply and went to the bathroom to change into more suitable clothing for rest and extraction. The slinky dress and high heeled shoes would be used by another girl with similar build on a different mission. The wig and fur coat likewise also belonged to the program. Her drab colored trousers and black turtleneck were assigned to her, but she had nothing of her own but the vivid green of her eyes and red of her hair. The memory of where they came from was long since lost.

Ivan shook her awake a few hours later, and she was instantly alert. Rolling out of bed, she collected her things and used the bathroom before scrubbing it clean of her presence. He looked on in approval, not saying a word. There was nothing to say, anyway. It was time for their extraction, and she was never to know the actual location of the program facilities. Ivan put the blindfold on himself, and guided her by the elbow out of the safe house and into the waiting transport that would bring them back. None of the girls ever tried to slip the blindfold or quiz their handlers. That was not the kind of initiative that would be valued.

The hallways of the complex were empty; this time of night, the younger girls were all shackled into their beds, and the older girls were likely on missions, in extra training sessions or in bed themselves. Some older girls still shackled themselves to the bed, the habit too ingrained, making them unable to sleep without it. Yelena and Tatiana called it a weakness, and taunted Maria mercilessly for it. After seeing that the first night in the Upper Ranks, Natalia trained herself not to need it.

Needing anything or anyone was a weakness. Weakness was culled ruthlessly from the ranks. There was no room for weakness in an agent.

Right now, Natalia was the best and brightest. Some of the girls found it hard to believe she had once been Rank E in the training grounds. It hadn't been because of the academics. She had excelled at languages, geography, history, computer science, botany and anatomy. It had been her stubborn resistance to the physical side of the program, not remaining silent when the barbed wire or whips cut her skin, not seizing the advantage in hand to hand fights, not fighting the trainers when the staves hit her too hard. Natalia had nearly been sent to the gallery as target practice when she attempted to escape the training grounds, using every trick in the book that they had tried to teach her.

It had been a long game, one that had the trainers fooled. She had gotten as far as the wall when she collapsed from the stun guns. That had gotten her immediately promoted to the Upper Ranks, and her trainers reprimanded. It was rumored that Laika was never heard from again, that Gregor had himself been used as a target on the training grounds.

Rumors. Whispers. Coiling syllables in the dark, the currency between damned souls jockeying for first place in this hellhole.

Only the best survived. Only the best received names and recognition, food and clothing, heat and missions and medical care. Those who fell beneath the cutoff were ignored. If they fell too far, they died or became targets. Such was the way of the complex.

"Was he cute?" Tatiana asked Natalia as she slipped into her bed for some rest.

She snorted at the slender blonde girl in derision, two years older than her. "What does it matter? He's dead."

In the bed next to her, Yelena chuckled. "So no, he wasn't useful or clever in bed at all." Waiting a beat, she slipped out of her bed and entered Natalia's. "Natasha,  cолнышко моё," she murmured, slipping her hand between the redhead's legs. She was blonde too, but had sharper features, larger breasts and a vicious streak a mile wide. Natalia thought perhaps it was the influence of her handler, Pyotr Vasilievich Starkovsky. He was oily and evil, even amongst the den of evil men they worked for. Natalia hadn't realized it when she was younger, but entering the Upper Ranks had let her see them for they were.

Tatiana sighed dramatically. "You have no romance in your souls, girls."

"Romance? On a mission?" Yelena scoffed. She rubbed Natalia between her legs and nipped at her earlobe, staking her claim again.

"Love is for children," Natalia murmured, warmth beginning to spread through her. She parroted the line often; it was one of Madame Bolishinko's favorites to say when the girls complained about the ballet training. _Love is for children, and you are all women._ The girls had all ranged in age from ten to fourteen in that class. Natalia had been ten years old.

"Good thing we can't love," Yelena murmured fiercely before kissing Natalia and working her body in earnest.

Natalia came quietly, lassitude stealing through her. She watched as Yelena licked her fingers in satisfaction, and looked over at Tatiana. "Sure you don't want this, Tati?" she asked, a slight edge to her voice. "I'm better than any man."

"Might be so," Tatiana replied in an indifferent tone, "but I prefer fucking men. I'll fuck a girl if I have to, but I like men. Better if they're cute and fit."

"The job was neither," Natalia replied, cutting off what likely would have been a barbed remark from Yelena. "He was old and ugly and a traitor to our country."

"Capitalist swine," Yelena spat, moving to her own bed.

"Easy, Rooskaya," Natalia teased. "Save the patriotism for the instructors."

"I don't have class today," Yelena declared loftily.

"Starkovsky's bed?" Tatiana scoffed, settling back down to sleep. "Or is he going to sell your services to the highest bidder again?"

Yelena made a snarling sound. "Neither, you jealous cow. I will be going on a _special mission._ There is specific training I will receive, and you lot will be in a silly classroom like the idiot children you are."

"Shut it, Belova," came Oksana's voice from across the dorm. Oksana was a solidly built brunette, with wide features, ice blue eyes, and a nasty penchant for beating in heads as if her fists were bricks. "Some of us still need sleep. Your handler will fuck you blind if he wants to, or sell you, or cut you, or kill you if you stop being useful. We all know this. None of us will escape this truth. Don't lie to yourself and think you're better than the rest of us."

"Natalia Alianovna has the highest marks anyway," Julia added. "Yours are second, Yelena."

Statements like that made Yelena spit with rage, so Natalia looped an arm across the narrow gap between their beds to catch her shoulder. "Sleep,  луна мой. Go on your mission and tell me about it tomorrow."

"It already is tomorrow, you silly girl," Yelena replied sulkily. But she kissed Natalia's palm before turning away from her to sleep.

"I mean the tomorrow after you get back. Tell me about your special training."

"If I'm allowed," Yelena replied coyly.

Natalia snorted. "You'll find a way, if only to taunt me."

Yelena chuckled, then turned over to face Natalia. "This is truth,  cолнышко моё. Sleep now, dream of me."

Natalia's dreams were always full of blood or fire. There was no room for Yelena or the other girls, or for the tainted, tortured ways they jockeyed for power. Just blood, rivers of it tumbling down through her spread fingers, gushing out of her chest or mouth, leaving her slick and shining red. Or fire, endless walls of fire surrounding her, raining ash and smoke, choking her.

She never died in her dreams, even though she should have. Somehow, she found the music in pain and death, could dance to the tune of her handlers. They weren't afraid of her or the other girls in the dorm.

Perhaps they should have been.

***

Yelena was gone for a week.

In that time, Natalia was run hard through her paces in Madame Bolishinko's dance studio, on the range with four different pistols and rifles, and had to stand for oral examinations in all subjects without time to prepare. It was a grueling week, mentally as well as physically. She and the other girls were used to random exam times, but it was odd to have them immediately after a successful mission.

Tatiana was sent out for a specific intel extraction that lasted less than a day. Oksana was sent out on a kill mission, her specialty. Julia, Ekaterina and Maria were sent on honey pot missions. Vera, Anna, Anastasia, Olga, Aleksandra, Larissa, Maya, Olessa, Nina, Elizaveta, Evgeniya, Irina and Ksenia were all at lessons. Natalia wasn't sure where the others were; Zoya, Klara, Sofia, Raisa, Ulyana, Florentina, Taisia, Svetlana and Regina had been called away prior to Natalia's last mission and haven't returned yet.

Twenty-eight girls in the Upper Ranks, and there usually were enough supplies for only twenty of them. Kindness in the form of splitting rations was discouraged and left the girls too weak to fight at times.

Yelena had no idea where she had been when she returned to the complex. She recalled a new area for lessons, a chair she was strapped to, needles and soreness in her eyes. "Like the lower rankings," she said with a measure of irritation. "Which is silly. Of course I do well in all lessons. I've never gone without rations."

Natalia had, and she recalled the sharp sting of cold and hunger and the bite of whips across the skin. It was a reminder of how bad things could be if she ever failed again.

"Of course you haven't," Natalia told her in a soothing manner. "Was it a difficult mission? What did you do?"

She opened her mouth, then shut it, frowning as she tried to think. "I... I don't know."

"You were gone for a week," Natalia pointed out.

"It's a lie, of course," Oksana sneered.

Looking at the signs of distress on Yelena's face, Natalia shook her head. Yelena was three years younger than her and had a fairly forceful personality. She didn't believe in playing coy amongst the girls, not when she could boast of success. "No, it isn't. This is real."

"Why would they erase memory of a mission?" Oksana scoffed. She curled her lip in derision at Yelena. "Unless you _failed."_

"Ranking doesn't reflect that," Natalia replied.

"The missing girls still aren't on the board," Yelena added, looking at the board across the dorm. The other girls looked, too. "No scores for them at all."

"So they're probably dead," Oksana replied carelessly.

Nine girls gone for at least two weeks, if not longer. Only nineteen girls to feed, then. But if they were looking to reduce numbers...

"They've been feeding us all," Natalia began. "If they cut rations back further..."

"We know the world beyond us is poor," Oksana said.

"Commoners have no money, little food, few clothing options," Natalia murmured, remembering what she had seen while out on her missions.

Yelena was making a pained expression, hand at her temple. "I can't remember. I'm trying, but I can't remember." She looked at Natalia and Oksana in horror. "I truly can't remember."

Exchanging concerned glances with Oksana, Natalia pushed away her growing horror. "They are planning _something,"_ she murmured. "Making us and erasing us at will. Testing us for something. They never tell us anything because they don't have to."

"I am loyal," Yelena cried, hurt. "I would never betray our country. I live for the mission."

"What if that's no longer enough?" Oksana asked.

Prior whispers were that only a single girl would be the ultimate agent for Mother Russia. All this training, and only a single girl would survive.

"It has to be enough," Yelena hissed. "It always was."

"Then why erase you? Why unmake you?" Natalia asked quietly. It made her wonder about her exams, her training, her missions. Did she have any missing time?

By the expression on Oksana's face, Natalia could tell that she wasn't the only one wondering.

"They don't care about us, do they?" Yelena asked, voice icy and vicious. "We give of ourselves, do all they ask and more, and now we are not trusted. As if _we_ are the devils to be slaughtered. As if _we_ are the traitors."

"Are we to be given to the training grounds?" Natalia asked, voice level. None of her fears or misgiving were audible.

The correct answer should have been _We will do all that must be done._ The answer these girls wanted to give was _hell no!_

"Something is happening outside the complex, then," Natalia said in low tones when Oksana and Yelena remained quiet. "I've been in exams, you've been on a kill mission," she said, looking at Oksana. "We can wait for Tati, she had an intel mission. The honey girls might know current events outside of Siberia."

Siberia was large, and the girls' best guess as to the location of the complex based on subtle cues and their collective knowledge of geography. The bitter cold and large size of the training grounds seemed to confirm the girls' guess.

Uneasy, the three girls waited for Tatiana. Julia, Ekaterina and Maria would know more useful information, but for the moment, they wanted to keep the circle small. If their suspicions were too well known, handlers and watchers would rain down upon them, and memories could then disappear like ash and smoke after a fire.

The four conferred in whispers beneath a blanket late at night. The nine missing girls hadn't returned to the bunks, and none of the others knew anything about it. Vera had supposed they were all on a mission, but Larissa started saying they were dead, since they no longer had scores on the board. If they were dead, any of the remaining nineteen could be next; no one wanted to say the words aloud, but they all knew it was true.

"I was getting information from immunologists," Tatiana said in low tones. "They weren't defecting or selling secrets. But I was to steal all his research then kill him so no one else could have it."

The other three stared at her. "They're going to make something new," Natalia murmured. "We aren't what they want or need. Which means they'll use us up and kill us." She looked at Yelena earnestly. "You must have seen something or learned something on your mission."

She looked at Natalia in horror. "But I am loyal. I am everything they want me to be."

 _You love me,_ Natalia wanted to say, but didn't. Of course she would deny it in front of the girls, would swear up and down that she was incapable of such a thing. But she did, she sought comfort from Natalia's body and lips, cared what she thought. It was a competition still, a twisted kind of love rather than something pure or innocent. Love was still love, still something their handlers would want to erase.

Love would make her sloppy. Love would make her deviate from the mission.

"The others may know something about the outside world to tell us why now," Natalia whispered. "Regardless, we don't belong in the world. We have no place with any normal girls. Madame says so all the time."

"They can't turn us loose," Tatiana said.

"So if they can't use us, they'll kill us," Oksana said.

"I don't care about most of you," Yelena said flatly. They all knew of her feelings for Natalia. It was an open secret among the girls, but handlers either didn't know or didn't care..

"I don't want to die," Tatiana hissed. "None of us do."

"So we stop them," Natasha said quietly. "Instead of waiting for them to kill us, we kill them."

A stunned silence descended over the girls.

Yelena recovered first. "Yes. Yes, we should do this. The rest of you will be erased, most likely. Bits and pieces, they might keep. But they will scrape us out, empty us of what they might not like. Hollow shells to do with what they will. _I will not be a puppet._ I am an agent. I am skilled, and I will be better than Natalia. I cannot be this if I am erased."

"So we agree? We take down the program?" Natalia asked.

Slowly, the others nodded.

"Keep it between us for now," Natalia whispered. "Try to observe, keep it close so they don't guess. We need to be sure we succeed. If we don't, we're dead."

"They forgave you an escape once," Tatiana said.

"The ones I fooled were punished severely, and they were Lower Rank instructors. These are crueler, harsher and more demanding. They will not suffer for our mistakes, we will."

"The four of us won't be able to do it alone," Oksana pointed out reasonably.

"No one said we couldn't use the others," Yelena said, looking at the others with a fevered gaze. "They don't need to know what we're doing, and can still help us."

"How does this make us any different from the handlers?" Tatiana asked angrily. "Why become them to escape them?"

"We don't break girls for fun," Yelena hissed, eyes flashing and teeth bared. "We don't rape them and hit them and burn them. We don't hold them down and watch them scream when scores force them to do unspeakable things. We use them as placeholders and observers, information gatherers. We don't hurt them just because we can."

They were all silent for a long moment. Everyone knew about Starkovsky, after all.

"It's not just about bringing them down," Natalia murmured. "We also have to survive Siberia, get to safety and escape into the populace."

"Defect ourselves?" Yelena asked in horror.

 _"Survive,"_ Natalia corrected. "Save ourselves."

"For what?" Oksana asked.

"We have a specific skill set. We can be anyone or anything," Natalia pointed out. "I'm sure we can figure something out."

"So we're going to do this?" Tatiana asked, concerned as she took in their solemn expressions. "We're going to make a preemptive strike?"

They looked amongst themselves, weighing options.

"Yes, we are," Natalia said, voice hard. "There are nineteen girls in this dorm, they provide rations for twenty. One set is missing, is it not? One of the girls knows, or the handlers are hiding it for themselves. We need to track it down and hide it, along with any extra clothing, weapons, tools, _anything._ They have no interest in saving us, so we will have to do it ourselves. We commit to this now, or it will never work. Regardless of personal feelings for each other, we _must_ work together against them."

Natalia held out her hand. Yelena immediately grasped it. Tatiana pondered it for a second before doing so as well. Oksana frowned, torn, but then grasped their hands as well.

"Together," Oksana agreed.

***

Information gathering was slow and intermittent at best, especially when they had no idea what they were looking for. Madame Bolishinko let nothing slip, and continued to admonish the girls for any displays of emotion, any extraneous motion that ruined the appearance of perfection. Others might have seemed anxious, and took innocent questions at face value. They were young and in their care. Of course the handlers and teachers and watchers were sure of themselves; they couldn't imagine any of the girls turning on them. The girls were trained to please them, to work without question, without regard for their own safety or limits.

There was no outward sign that the girls were watching the watchers, comparing notes, tracking their missing times and trying to figure out what was done to them.

Natalia followed Ivan through strange hallways that perhaps could match Yelena's description. She did her best to memorize the path and bury it deep; these rooms would have to be destroyed first. None of the techs here could survive.

She stayed still as Ivan had technicians strap her down into a chair similar to the indoctrination area of the Lower Ranks. Wrists and ankles strapped down in leather restraints, electrodes placed on her temples, eyelids taped open. Natalia looked at Ivan in concern.

"New test," he told her gravely.

A screen in front of her turned on, a swirling spiral beginning to move as an IV line was placed into the crook of her arm. "Comrade," she murmured, glancing at Ivan.

"Trust me."

She didn't. She couldn't.

He didn't need an answer, and turned away from her to nod at the technician to begin the infusion. She felt a flash of cold in her vein, and she looked just above the swirling spiral. Yelena hadn't recalled this much. She must have looked.

"Count backward from one hundred," Ivan instructed.

Natalia got up to forty-seven before she passed out, and knew Ivan and the tech hadn't expected that. Their anxious looks were obvious in her peripheral vision. What was this test for?

When she came to, she was lying on her bed in the dorm, the other girls watching over in concern. That was new. She had thought they were all supposed to hate each other.

"Something went wrong," Elizaveta whispered.

Ksenia told her about Ivan bringing her back to the dorm in his arms, deathly pale and still. Julia and Ekaterina had taken first shift watching over her, especially when Starkovsky seemed to linger too close to the dorm doors.

Nina had watched sullenly from the doorway to the dorm, then left to go to the gym for extra practice. She had never liked Natalia, and had the best scores before her arrival. Then Yelena had arrived, and further pushed her down the ranks. Maya had once said it was because she was paired with Boris, but had never explained the comment further. Her handler wasn't as bad as Starkovsky was, everyone knew that. Natalia didn't know anything else about Nina's relationship with Boris. In fact, the only thing that she knew about Nina was that she hated the nickname Ninotchka. Which of course meant that she used it every chance she got in the sweetest tone of voice to truly get under her skin. Nina would be trouble, and Natalia would rather not save her if she had a choice.

Some of the girls regaled her with stories from Outside, little things gleaned from their missions and meant to make her feel better. The latest films at the cinema, the mutterings between the rival intelligence agencies that were left in the wake of the KGB, the new training instructor for the Upper Rank girls.

"Призрак," Ekaterina told Natalia later. "Emotionless. Fluid despite the metal arm. Hits hard, aims straight, no errors. He will train only the best and brightest of us. Ten girls, they say."

"No name?" Natalia had asked, pretending to be weaker than she was. Oksana had looked at her in concern, no doubt wondering if there was internal damage and she would drown in her own blood. Yelena was called away, else she would have wedged herself into Natalia's bed and not moved at all.

"He's an asset. No names such as we have, as far as I can tell. I heard Commisar Bruskin call him the Winter Soldier."

"What happens to the girls he doesn't train?" Natalia rasped.

Ekaterina looked away, visibly disconcerted. "No one said." She waited a beat before looking at Natalia. "And if this is what they do to their best and brightest, the one a handler would treat like a daughter, what will they do to the rest of us?"

No one had an answer for that.

***  
***


	2. Mission Details

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art in this chapter is by [themurderingbutterfly](http://themurderingbutterfly.tumblr.com) and [nervouscatcolor.](http://nervouscatcolor.tumblr.com)

Natalia improved faster than she expected to. Ivan looked very pleased by that, and patted her shoulder again. "Папочка," she had rasped, touching his hand. It was a far more familiar term than she usually used with him, along with a slight flutter of her eyelashes as if she was uncertain she should speak so familiarly.

Ivan's breath caught, his expression softening further. "Доченька," he breathed, fingers tightening on her shoulder.

"Did I discredit you?" Natalia asked, looking at him through her eyelashes carefully. "I was hurt, I must have failed the test."

"The calibration was wrong. Not to worry, you will take it again."

Well, damn. Not what she wanted to hear at all.

"But you will have more time to recover and train. I am sure the error the technician made will not be repeated. There is a new technician now."

She refused to ponder that one or feel guilty. That was obviously how the administrators wanted to discipline their techs, and far be it from her to presume she knew best how to keep them in line. It certainly worked well with the girls.

The lessons were with the Winter Soldier, tall and solid, a metal left arm, dark eyes fixed with a thousand yard stare and dark hair that looked soft. He would have been handsome if he hadn't been a walking phantom, a legend meant to terrify those in the intelligence community. The title had been handed down for decades, apparently, a moniker that recalled dozens of deaths all over the globe. He was here to train them, refine them, reshape them. The paper targets and lesser ranked girls or useless political prisoners weren't enough. They weren't trained well enough, not to his liking, and the Winter Soldier let them all know it.

Some of the other girls went down hard, the metal hand striking them savagely across the face or chest. The crunch of bone was loud in the ensuing silence, and it was hard to drown out the sound of Olessa's pained sobbing. "You let pain have your voice," the Winter Soldier told her coldly, and Natalia had to repress a shiver. She had been told the same thing, once upon a time, and it had signaled a demotion in the ranks.

Sure enough, Olessa's handler was there, stony faced and with a hand over the butt of a revolver. Natalia and Yelena exchanged worried glances as Olessa began to sob harder, but that didn't stop him from dragging her out. They trained harder, they remained silent, and Olessa didn't return to the dorms that night. No one had any sign of what had become of her.

There was no fighting the Winter Soldier on his terms. It was clear enough to most girls, though none of them really knew what to do about that piece of information. Natasha kept her thoughts to herself; it was still a competition, even if the other girls made it sound as though they were equals in some way, as if she should share her secrets with them like the idiots in Western movies they saw in the cinema. Instead of taking her turn as a fight, she treated it as a dance, one of blades and fists and feet; twirling around _en pointe_ as if she was dancing with the Bolshoi enabled her to get out of range of his fists and then she leapt over his kicks, tucking into a roll that landed her behind him, her fist at his back. He kicked back, knocking the breath out of her and sending her across the mat, but she had landed a blow first.

_She had landed a blow first._

That had to count for something. And it proved this was a flesh and blood man, not a ghost as the whispers said. Ghosts were intangible, couldn't be struck down. Men, however skilled, would have a weakness _somewhere._ She simply had to find it and apply pressure accordingly until he broke.

Assuming she didn't break first.

The Winter Soldier dismissed her after the strike, but the clock on the wall stated that she had lasted nearly ten minutes on the mat with him. That was better than the other girls so far, but as far as she was concerned, it wasn't good enough. She wanted to take him down, wanted to prove her worth. Ivan might be proud of her, but the sickly, oily gazes of the other handlers were cloying and made her spine itch. It was only a matter of time before they came up with a defect in some way so that they could get their hands on her. She knew what they did with their girls, the horrible whispers in the middle of the night when their charges returned with their spirits broken and bodies ruined. Yelena was a favorite as far as Starkovsky was concerned, since he didn't share her with anyone else. But after his touch, she was always frantic to be in Natalia's bed, as if that could wash away the taint in her memory.

Natalia narrowed her eyes as she contemplated his current target. Aleksandra Sergeyevna was not the first of her name. There had been a girl with Aleksandra's name on the roster when she was accepted into the Upper Ranks according to the rumors, and she had been forced to change her name. Nina had too, if she recalled correctly. Aleksandra seemed to tolerate the change, but Nina was a nasty piece of work all around. It likely would have upset her.

Aleksandra hit the floor quickly, two minutes into her fight. She was never very strong in hand to hand combat. Her forte had always been marksmanship, and she was terrific with a sniper rifle and near impossible targets. The sheer joy in her face at striking the targets was matched by Natalia's enjoyment of hand to hand, knives and pistols. Natalia liked close range, seeing the effects of her work. Aleksandra didn't.

When the Winter Soldier was ready to turn away to tally scores however he planned to do them, Natalia stood up and approached him again. "I'd like another turn, Comrade."

He stopped and narrowed his eyes at her, assessing. Her ribs were bruised, but all the girls knew how to fight through that kind of pain. She had been forced to work a few missions even when injured, just because evacuation and extraction hadn't been viable options. All the girls knew that failure was not tolerated. Failure led to removal from the program. Permanently.

Finally, he nodded at her, and extended the metal hand in a beckoning gesture.

She came onto the mat, ignoring the whispers and twitters behind her. Useless cows. They would be fodder for the slaughter if they stayed so complacent and didn't challenge themselves to find a place. Handlers could always find new girls. If she was matchless, beyond compare, if she was perfect and outperformed expectation, there would be no excuse to be rid of her.

He was wise to her method to duck and weave now, but that wasn't what she was going for this time around. Yes, she wanted to last longer than ten minutes if possible. But this was to make a point, to drive it home that she was the best, she was agile, she was _worthy._ If she was worthy, if she earned top marks consistently and learned the lessons they taught her, intended or not, then she would continue to move up the ranks. She would live, she would learn, she would then _survive._ There were no illusions here; if Ivan couldn't save her from whatever horrid testing they had planned, then she had better make sure she was essential to their missions.

Tucking into a cartwheel, Natalia not only avoided a vicious kick, but the heel of her foot landed across his jaw and snapped his head back. She rolled to her feet and darted in close, under his sweeping arm, and jabbed him in the jaw. His entire torso was too well armored and he had tough work boots on while she was barefoot and in the workout uniform. No, she would never be able to harm him in the usual way.  
  
"You're a man, not a phantom," she said, voice low enough not to carry. "You're not a machine, not an object. They call you Asset, but you are not a _thing."_

Something shifted in his eyes, and she moved back out of reach of his arms and legs just in case it forced him to lash out. Oh, it was a sore spot after all. Because of course this man was treated like a thing and not a human being, however augmented and talented. Because it would serve their purposes to treat him so, and likely amused the higher ups. They liked treating people like lapdogs or windup toys.

"They control you. Power over the powerless, yes?" she said, locking eyes with him. That was the only way she could see the shift in his expression, the tick in his eye the moment before he lunged for her. She barely dodged him, barely.

He growled like a feral thing, the first sound he'd made other than calling out the names on the roster he had been given.

 _Oh._ Oh, she'd _hurt_ him.

This was no time to chastise herself for the thoughtless move. She'd wanted to strike a blow, not wound him grievously. Wounded animals cornered were the most vicious, after all.

"Do you have a name?" she asked, remaining in her crouched position, hands up.

His eyes flashed and his jaws tightened. Oh, no. No, no, no, this was even worse than she had thought. He had no name, was now angry that he had no name, and it logically made no sense at all, but he was treated like a machine and Yelena had her memory erased, and there were all the new "tests" that the top brass was working on...

All this flashed through her mind in the instant it took to duck into a roll and kick at the back of his knees as she went past.

"Is that in my future then, Comrade?" she asked, eyes bright. Emotions like sadness would not be tolerated, tears even less so. But there was something inside her chest that threatened to burst at the thought of losing however little of herself that she had. "Will I lose my name, too?"

The Winter Soldier straightened and stepped back from her, jaw still tight. The light in his eyes was different now. Wary, but not angry.

"No," he said abruptly. Then he bowed at the waist. "You're done here today."

As he stepped off the mat, he half turned and took in her bewildered expression. "Same time tomorrow for your hand to hand lessons."

It seemed that he had already decided who he would train, then.

***

Of course the girls wanted to know why the Winter Soldier wanted to train her and none of the other girls. The most she could say was that she wasn't sure, perhaps it was the strike to his back or the fact that she asked to get back on the mat for another try. She certainly played that up for Ivan's benefit later, but with the girls she let confusion show. "Ten were supposed to be able to train with him. I'm not sure why he changed his mind."

Olessa still wasn't back, and no one would speak of her in the dorms, as if it was unlucky. There was more room now, with no one rising up to the Upper Ranks and filling the empty beds in the dorm, but no one moved. They stayed huddled in their collective corners, whispering amongst their unsteady allies.

Natalia had a theory about why she was chosen. She had made him _feel_ when he was supposed to be a machine. She had turned a ghost into a man. That was powerful indeed, and a sign that perhaps she had an innate sense of how best to hurt others. It was a dubious gift, true, but one that could be honed to bladelike perfection and aimed correctly at the target. She was the best student, she made sure of that. She didn't fail. She _couldn't_ fail.

Only the breakable girls would break. Natalia would simply grow stronger.

Faced with the Winter Soldier alone, she no longer felt as proud of her accomplishment. He could break her, after all. She was still nothing more than a girl. She was mortal.

"Why did you ask my name?" he asked as he watched her wrap her hands to prepare.

"All people have them. Even we have names, true names, deep in our hearts."

"That would earn you punishment."

"So would many things."

He ducked his head in acknowledgement and waited for her to approach the mat. His eyes tracked every movement, cataloguing her much in the same way she had catalogued him. It would be a difficult fight, even if it was only meant to train her.

"I could name you," she said as stepped onto the mat.

"Don't," he said sharply, shaking his head. At her blink of surprise, his expression softened a little. "Don't. Don't make me human. Don't pretend this is anything other than what it is."

"What is it, then, Comrade?"

"Training you so that the muscle memory will be there no matter how many times they wipe you clean and put in other memories."

Her gut clenched, and she knew better than to ask if it was possible or not. Yelena couldn't remember the week she had been away. Who had she been then? Other girls who perhaps were not as subtle or good at their trade likely were adjusted in this way. The missing girls were probably dead, deemed an acceptable loss as the administrators and techs sought to finalize the formula to getting this done.

Natalia knew better than to ask if it was done to him. Obviously, it had. "How will they do it?" she asked instead.

His eyes were flat, lips compressed tightly, unhappily. "Grigor Ivanov Chelintsov has the procedure to put in memories. Lyudmila Antonovna Kudrin alters the body in some way, lets you heal faster and accept the memories as your own. The rest of the teams don't matter, but those two do. The rest are replaceable."

She watched him carefully as she bowed to face him. "They anger you."

"You are a child. They should not do this."

"I am strong and well trained. They expect it of me."

"You're one of the Black Widow program. Of course they do. But all the men in the Wolf Spider program went mad and died." He paused before launching into an attack. "Well, Niko Constantin survived the treatments, but he was impossible to control. He is in a gulag now, and the male program is a failure."

"Why do you tell me this?"

He watched as she continued to duck away from his jabs, and only smiled mirthlessly when she started throwing punches of her own. "You will survive them. You will survive them all."

"You remember being human," Natalia murmured. "They don't want you to be, but you remember. That's why you tell me this. So I won't forget that."

The Winter Soldier caught her fist in his metal hand and squeezed just hard enough for bones to grind together. "I will forget this when I'm returned. I've been too long on one mission. _I remember things._ I remember what they have me do, what they have all of you do. They need to be stopped. I cannot, but you can."

"This is a test," she said evenly, not responding outwardly to the pain in her hand. "I will not fail it, Comrade. I remember my training."

"That's good. It's the only thing that will keep you alive."

She couldn't tell if he was truly trying to break his programming, or if this was another test. All she could do was grit her teeth, grasp her free hand over his and then pull, launching herself up and over his bulk, her thighs going up and around his head. The momentum pulled him down to the mat, and he started to laugh.

"Not a little girl after all," he said, eyes alight with mischief.

"No, I am not. I was never a child."

His eyes sobered. "No one is here."

Then they began to fight in earnest. She fought as if her life depended on it, and was able to score a few hits. She didn't think he was letting her get away with anything, and she wasn't about to celebrate. Natalia wasn't stupid, after all. If she showed any sign of weakness, he would cut her down and she might die of her injuries. They fought past the point where she tired and would have wanted to call for it to end. She had been trained to fight under such conditions, after all, and she had to do this until he called it quits.

When he finally did, he watched her closely. "I could have killed you."

"They would have punished you if you had."

Natalia watched him nod, his eyes flat and dead. "As they do if I step out of line."

"I couldn't imagine you stepping out of line."

"There's only so much they can erase before there's nothing left." His eyes flashed in warning, and he nodded sharply to the door. "Remember that, Natalia Alianovna Romanova. Hold tightly to whatever you can so they can't take it."

"Why do you tell me this?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper. He could ignore her if he wanted to that way.

He didn't. There was something unspeakably sad in his eyes. "You see a human man, not a weapon," he said quietly. "I could almost love you for that."

It would have been cruel to say Madame Bolinshinko's _Love is for children,_ so she kept her lips shut. Instead, Natalia stepped closer to him and touched his hand with hers. "It wouldn't be safe to, Comrade. Even if you had a name, even if your fate lay outside this place. Mine doesn't, and I am bound to the program. I'm a weapon, Comrade. You're meant to hone the edges, polish away the roughness, make it so that I am flawless."

"You are without peer," he told her quietly, reverently.

And one day soon, he would forget her. He would forget all of this; they would see to that. So she slanted a gentle kiss across his lips, just a brushing of skin on skin, and left the training area to head to the dorms.

Of course everyone wanted to know how the training with the Winter Soldier was going. "Too complex for you," Natalia had sneered at Nina. "You belong with the Lower Ranks, Ninotchka."

Nina turned puce with rage. "You shouldn't be so high and mighty. You can still die like any other girl."

"Perhaps," Natalia said coolly. "But who do they value more? Me or you?"

Stalking off in a huff, Nina didn't look back. The other girls fell in, hoping to catch a few words of wisdom. Even Nina's usual friends didn't bother with her now.

"We call him Призрак," she began slowly. "But he is still just a man. And like all men, he has weaknesses."

"You slept with him!" Tatiana trilled, gleeful. She ignored Natalia's sneering and disdainful denials. If anything, that only made the other girls believe it more.

Yelena was the only one to believe the truth, so she was the only one Natalia discussed his cryptic words with. "He is a tool to them, as we are," she whispered beneath their shared blanket. "He wants them to burn for it."

"So truly, we need to burn it all down."

"Yes, I think we do. And we can't save them all."

The Upper Ranks were in the center of the complex, the Lower Ranks in the outer ring. Rank E was closest to the outer gates and courtyards, the closest to Siberia's frozen wilds. Too many would die on their way out, and not all of them staff.

Natalia couldn't find it in her to feel sorry.

"We'll need more supplies," Natalia told her earnestly. "We have food, but we need gear, not just a way out."

"I'm being prepped for a mission," Yelena murmured, only a trace of fear in her voice. "You'll wait for me, won't you?"

"I told you, we need gear. Look for some where you are, okay?"

Yelena's expression clouded. "I'll be going to the Odd Hallway."

"They told you this?"

"Starkovsky... He told the men I wouldn't remember what they did to me, he'd see to it."

Natalia's blood ran cold. "Yelena..."

"There's a mission anyway. They'll prep me, put in what they want, take out what they don't."

Natalia cradled her close and kissed her. "Lena..."

"I'm scared," Yelena whimpered against Natalia's mouth. "What if I don't come back?"

"I'll burn them all down in your name."

Yelena kissed her fiercely, hands tight on her arms. Natalia slid her tongue into Yelena's mouth, and their touch was feverish and desperate. Who knew what Yelena's job would be, after all? Who knew if she would even return as herself?

"Cолнышко моё," Yelena whispered afterward. "Whatever happens, don't forget me."

"I won't," Natalia promised, hoping she wasn't lying.

***

Yelena was gone for a month. Ksenia was gone for two. Natalia was brought to the Odd Hallway again, strapped down at wrists and ankles, strap across her breasts and forehead to keep her torso still. Someone must have moved too much or seized, she supposed. Ivan wasn't present, and neither was Starkovsky, so that was a relief. Just unnamed techs, the swirling screen she refused to look at dead on, the drips and counting backward, this time in Latin to make it harder.

She was vaguely aware of something wrong, of something sliding around inside her mind, an awareness that wasn't her own. It came, it went, it _pushed_ at her sideways. Still, Natalia refused to let her consciousness be shunted aside.

Natalie Rushman was a teacher, in love with a man named Peter. He was a stockbroker in East Germany, a prestigious firm with many international prospects. How likely was it that Peter could be bought? How could the Red Room get their hooks into him?

Red Room. It was the first time Natalia had heard of the name in reference to the Complex.

Natalie settled further into Natalia's mind despite her efforts to keep her out. She was becoming Natalie, feeling her memories sinking into the hollows of her brain. It almost hurt, and it occurred to Natalia that if she fought this, she could hurt more, and longer, and the techs would know something was wrong.

So Natalie sank into her, overlaying her mind, and it stopped hurting so much. That allowed her body to relax, and she got the feel of Natalie. Soft personality type, trusting, believing in the goodness of others. Loved wholly and completely, and Peter was her One True Love.

Natalia laid beneath Natalie, a sleeping agent locked away until keywords and triggers would shake her loose again. Later, she would seethe and plot, figure out who should die messily before the fires purified the place.

She was turned loose into suburbia to corral Peter, Uncle Ivan calling and visiting every so often. Peter was wonderful, thoughtful, so loving on their dates. He invited her home, and she went through his entire household for codes and papers and passkeys while he slept. It took some time, but she finally found what she was looking for. Natalia always did the job. She never failed a mission before, and this wouldn't be the start for it.

But maybe she should have failed this one.

Two and a half months in, and Peter was their plaything. He deserved better.

With the success of the mission, they decided to do more with overlays. Not because they had to for a mission, but simply because they could. They created lives and memories and motivations, convoluted histories entirely unnecessary to do a simple wet work mission. But each time she went to the Odd Hallways, she worked out a good hiding place for a cache of weapons. And when she was trusted enough to get there on her own, she put away two Makarov pistols with extra ammo, three throwing knives and brass knuckles. She told Yelena about it, and alluded to it with Tatiana and Olga. Yelena added to the cache for certain, maybe the others as well. They did put aside the rations that would keep in the dorms as well as clothing and boots. Natalia added some rubles and jewelry to the weapons cache, and after another mission was able to put it in a backpack for easier retrieval.

Missions ran one after another, likely because there were fewer girls now. Natalia, Yelena, Tatiana, Olga, Ksenia, Nina, Maya, Elizaveta, Evgeniya, Julia, Aleksandra and Anna were left now. No one knew what happened to the other girls, and Olga wanted to let them in on the escape plan. "It will make it work faster. More supplies..."

"More opportunity for betrayal," Natalia hissed, eyeing Nina. "We can't trust them."

Olga frowned, but didn't argue the point. "This is taking too long."

"Perhaps, but we want to be successful." Natalia stared her down ruthlessly. "Better to be slow and steady but _done_ than to rush it all, fail, and condemn ourselves to death."

Olga looked away, unable to disagree. "All right."

Yelena kissed her, pleased by her strength of will and character. Natalia responded just enough to satisfy Yelena's desires, but was really tallying up who she wanted to take with her. It might not be too difficult with Aleksandra and Ksenia on board. Nina had some allies in the survivors, and Natalia didn't want Nina to make it through. It was awful and petty, likely marking her as no better than the masters of the Red Room, but she didn't care. She loathed Nina, and the feeling was absolutely mutual.

But Olga also had a point. They needed to get out, and they need to get out _now._

Too many were being called to the Odd Hallway. They needed to escape while they could even remember who they were.

***  
***


	3. Escape

Natalia looked around the dorms, taking in the empty beds, the quiet and the feeling that the very air was poison. "We need to go," she hissed to Yelena. The blonde was shivering with cold, the beginnings of a fever in her bright eyes and pale lips. She had been gone for a period of time again, no memory of what she had done in her absence. Natalia could feel her other lives like whispers and dreams, but Yelena remembered nothing. She wasn't sure which was the better outcome for what they were doing in the Odd Hallway.

"Olga's here, but Tati's out on a mission," Yelena said, her arms wrapped around herself.

"Do you want to die in here or die free?"

Yelena looked up, fever bright eyes clearing. "Free," she whispered. "No matter the cost."

"Then let's go. Olga was headed to the gym. It's on the way."

It was easy to creep through the hallways; the guard was at the end of the wing, and he was a lazy, shifty bastard. Natalia knocked on his door, all smiles and flirtatious stance. "You alone in there tonight?" she asked, her voice a sultry purr. "No one expecting you or planning to meet with you tonight?"

"I'm on shift all night." He leered and reached out to touch her shoulder. "Interested in practice time, little one?"

"Not anymore," she replied sweetly, her hand falling onto his wrist. It confused him, made him pause, and that let her grasp his wrist, twist it and wrench it downward as she moved past him. The guard fell to the floor, head banging into it sharply. Yelena entered his room next, a grim set to her lips. She stomped on his neck with her boots, and the crunching sound was loud in the darkness. Natalia nodded at her, then scooped up the set of keys at his waist as Yelena rifled through his belongings to grasp a knife, ten shot pistol and a knapsack.

"Olga hid the rations near the gym. Time to move," Yelena said, a fine tremor in her hands.

Damn. They might have to raid the infirmary for medicine. Maybe they would get lucky and the Siberian cold would be enough to bank any growing fever.

They were rarely so lucky. Natalia couldn't count on that.

She sent Yelena ahead to get Olga and made her way to the infirmary. It was locked, so she had to go through the keys on the ring one at a time until she found the correct one. The empty infirmary was chilly and creepy, shadows casting everything into a more sinister appearance. She had to push away her rising fears as she went to where she had seen staff keep the antibiotics. Grabbing rolls of bandages, sterile gloves and scalpels, the medications and antibiotic creams, Natalia moved quickly. A pillowcase from the examination table held her spoils, and she studiously avoided looking directly at the exam table with its stirrups still extended. Madame Bolishinko referred to their final physical exam as a graduation; sterilization rendered them all perfect for their jobs, and was the last hurdle before heading to the Odd Hallway. Funny how she didn't think of it before now, how she had even forgotten about that occurring, even though it had been terrifying at the time.

How much more of her had they stripped away in the Odd Hallway?

She met Yelena and Olga in the gym. There were no administrators or watchers, which seemed strange. There were no cameras in the complex; what girl would be foolish enough to try something when it was so heavily guarded? None of the girls wanted to question their good fortune, especially since choosing this escape date was random.

"There are fewer handlers for fewer girls," Olga murmured as they made their way to the Odd Hallway. "Fewer teachers, fewer recruits being elevated to our ranks."

"Politics," Yelena replied derisively.

Natalia didn't bother to offer up her opinion. She scanned the halls, alert to any shifting shadows, anything that might signal that their desperate plan would fail. Because of that heightened awareness, she was aware of Nina and her handler, Boris, returning from the Odd Hallway and heading toward them. There was nowhere to hide, nothing to be done but continue forward with their plan.

Boris tried to sound an alarm, but Natalia went at him at a dead run and grabbed the arm he had extended to push Nina out of the way. She used her forward momentum in a slide between his legs, knocking him off his feet and pulling his arm along with her. That wrenched it out of its socket, and Natalia twisted to slam her own booted feet down into his head. She moved quickly after letting go of his arm, grasping his head between her arms to start choking the life out of him. His neck was too thick for an easy snap, his heavy jowls serving as protection for once in his life. Boris thrashed about, fingers pulling and scraping at her arms, but she grit her teeth and bore down harder, watching Yelena and Olga fight Nina in the hallway. All three girls were silent, hardly even huffing out breaths. It was like a training exercise, only this was not for scores or ranking. This was still life or death, but it wasn't sanctioned by handlers.

When Boris finally fell limp, Natalia still held on and tried to jerk her arm swiftly to the side. Her arms didn't get enough purchase to wrench his spine out of alignment, so she dug into Boris' pockets for a weapon. Using a gun now would be suicide too soon, bringing staff running from the Odd Hallway. He had a pocket knife, a relatively dull thing mostly for opening letters and slicing through complicated knots. Natalia sawed at his throat, severing as much as she could until the dulled blade could no longer cut. Either way, her hands were stained red with blood, a pool of it widening around the body.

A quiet death, likely gentler than he deserved.

Taking the dull blade in hand, Natalia ducked into the ongoing fight between the girls and lashed out unexpectedly at Nina. The knife was buried in her back, between ribs. By the sucking sound that Nina made, Natalia thought perhaps she punctured a lung. She kicked at the back of Nina's knee, knocking her to the floor. When she grasped Nina's hair to try sawing through her throat as well, Olga stopped her.

"We're wasting too much time. We don't know when the watch will come."

Natalia snarled and threw Nina down to the floor. She banged Nina's head into the floor as quickly and as hard as she could before Yelena stopped her. Her chest heaved, and she suddenly wanted to _kill,_ an overriding urge to destroy flooding through her. It was what she had been trained for, after all, and a switch had been flipped. This was the only way out. They had to kill whoever got in their way, whoever wouldn't allow them to escape.

And she had never liked Nina anyway.

"I'll tie her up," Yelena said, pulling off her sneakers. "How odd. I wonder who she was supposed to be," she murmured as she picked out the laces.

"It doesn't matter," Natalia hissed. "We should just kill her now so she won't raise an alarm."

"Tie her up and she'll burn to death," Yelena replied.

Olga caught her breath by then, and looked up and down the hallway anxiously. "You have weapons here? Or are we all going to rely on the one gun and knife?"

Moving to the loose panel in the wall where she had hidden the weaponry, Natalia moved silently and quickly. She whirled around when she heard a noise that wasn't Yelena tying up Nina, nerves on edge.

Aleksandra was there, a rifle in hand. She had obviously been doing extra practice on the range, but where was _her_ handler? None of the girls were ever allowed to use live ammunition or live steel without supervision. "I knew something was about to happen," she sighed. "I saw you girls talking more lately."

If they hadn't hidden it well enough from Aleksandra, did the handlers know? Were they all trying to trap the girls?

Before the three of them could react, Aleksandra lifted the rifle, aiming in Natalia's direction.

The shot wasn't for her. It was for a technician down the hall, staring at the tableaux in shock, looking ready to run back toward the Odd Hallway.

"It's always good to have a sharpshooter on the team," she said mildly.

"Fine, you can come with us," Natalia said ungraciously, yanking the backpack out of her hiding place. "Don't slow us down."

"Of course not," she replied evenly, a hint of a smirk on their lips. "Lead on."

Ksenia was in the chair, strapped in and with the drips in place, screen starting to swirl. One tech looked up from his clipboard, annoyed, but then his eyes widened comically as the girls poured into the room. Alone, he only got as far as standing up before Aleksandra's rifle shot blew off the top of his head.

Yelena, who had studiously avoided looking at the screen, scooped up the clipboard. "Prepping for a mission. Shit, she's supposed to be twenty for this mission, a diplomat's mistress."

"You knew what they made us do," Natalia said quietly, not looking in her direction. She was too busy unhooking Ksenia. Aleksandra manned the door, looking down the hallway, Olga looked pale and sickly as she took in the room and its contents. "You know what they made us all do, whenever they wanted us to."

"Is there anyone else we can save?" Olga asked in a small voice.

"Death will save them," Natasha replied shortly. "Death comes for us all, and even the handlers can't fight off death."

"Cold," Yelena murmured, looking down. The clipboard slipped through her fingers and hit the floor with a clatter. "True, but so cold."

"We need to go," Aleksandra reminded them urgently. "Take her and let's go. That's two shots, and I'm sure it will have alerted someone."

The girls moved through the hallways as fast as they could, Olga and Yelena supporting Ksenia as she flopped about and seemed too groggy to move as quickly as they could. "Where are the others?" Natalia asked from her position in the lead, a Makarov in hand just in case. Her other was free, just to be sure she could grasp things if necessary. Aleksandra took up the rear, her rifle in hand and sweeping side to side to catch any stray guards.

Natalia found an office complete with networked computer system. "Perfect. Cover me."

"What are you doing?" Yelena hissed.

"If you need to, keep going," Natalia told her, looking up from where she sat at the desk. "I want to take them down completely and give us something to ensure our safety."

"Copy," Ksenia murmured, voice still slurred. Her eyes were glassy, but she looked up at Natalia unerringly. "Each. Of—off it. Us. Burn virus." She frowned, realizing her words were coming out all wrong, but wasn't able to string them together properly.

"Yes, that's my plan."

"We'll stay," Olga said firmly. "No more separations, no more challenges. We work together, we save each other. No more pitting us against each other, using us to kill each other."

If it was a condemnation of how Natalia treated Nina, she would ignore it.

Natalia let her fingers fly across the keys, copying whatever she could to the Zip drive attached to the computer. One Zip disk, two, then three. Entire databases of girls and their statistics and skills, mentions of the missions they were sent on, the collateral damage...

She wasn't the first girl Ivan had taken in and mentored. She would make sure that she was the last, though. This entire complex would never train another girl.

Planting a virus in the system, it started to erase the databases as she tucked away the Zip disks in her backpack. Separate command lines brought her to the internal environmental systems. Off went the sprinkler systems, different housing areas were locked down and sealed, alarms turned off, outside communications systems locked out to a password she made up on the fly and didn't intend to remember. Setting the controls on the boilers to allow them to overheat and build up pressure would take a long time. The complex had other commands for internal targeting systems, and they also had self-destruct overrides if any of the girls or the trainers went off the deep end due to conditioning. It was a last resort nuclear option to kill all the girls in the training grounds if they couldn't be brought back under control. Apparently they had learned from Leviathan that trained killers without inhibitions were too deadly a combination to have.

"Self-destruct timer in the training areas is set to ten minutes," Natalia announced, getting up from the computer. Once the screen saver kicked in, there would be no way to unlock the system and override her commands.

Aleksandra nodded, pride in her gaze. "Let's move."

Moving through the maze, they moved from the inner corridors into the outer ones. It was easy to tell by the change in hallway composition and structure. There were more guards here, and Natalia shot them or rushed forward to attack them with their own weapons. It didn't matter how messy the kill was as long as it was fast and ruthless, but Madame Bolishinko's training ran too deeply. She would always be moving gracefully, killing with a dancer's sense of style and motion. Guns were loud and a bit impersonal, but a knife... Blades were her passion, making her dance a deadly one. These guards were big and awkward, not understanding how the dance of death should be done.

Their loss, really.

The outer courtyards and rings of hallways and rooms were large, and it had been quite some times since any of them had been in the Lower Ranks. Natasha broke open whatever doors she could, despite the computerized locks, shooting out the walls to let the little girls roam the hallways freely. "You'll die if you stay," she told them all coldly. "Kill the men if you must, but take what you can and get out of here however you are able." She didn't know how far into the Siberian cold they were, had no idea what to tell the little girls. None of them were prepared, and even their little group likely was woefully unprepared. How many of them would die freezing to death on the tundra, unable to make it back to civilization? Training outside in the cold would only work for so long in helping them move before hypothermia set in. The girls in their little red dresses would never be able to get far.

At least it seemed that the Rank A girls were breaking into the supply rooms, getting staves and knives and tactical gear. That would give them a few more hours to survive, maybe even a day or two if they found hiding places together and huddled for warmth. The winter was so cold, so bleak, and no one would be looking for them. They would survive together or not, but there was nothing else Natalia could do for them. She was responsible for her own team, and undermined her own plan by letting these girls out of their locked dorms. But at the same time, she still recalled the bitter cold, starvation and pain inherent in the lower ranks. She remembered the despair eating at the walls, leaching into the brick. It would be cruel to leave the girls behind in that misery to die.

She was a monster, but she didn't always have to act like one. She could choose to be better. She could choose to overcome it. She could be better than what the others wanted her to be.

Natalia would be her own girl, now and forever. This was her promise to herself.

"Move!" Aleksandra shouted, suddenly shoving Yelena viciously. She was still helping Olga prop up Ksenia, and the three of them went down in a tangle of limbs, knocking into Natalia and sending her careening into the wall next to the door she was trying to break open. Shots rang out down the hall, and the sharp bark of Aleksandra's rifle once.

Turning her head, Natalia could see the guard there was dead. More came in, running and with pistols in their hands, stopping to check on the guard that Aleksandra felled. One-two-three, she dropped them, not even needing to recenter her aim. It looked as easy as a practice run in the firing range, and Natalia turned to her with a wicked grin on her face.

Red splotches were blooming all over the front of Aleksandra's body. She had taken two shots to the abdomen, both wounds bleeding profusely.

"Sandra!" Olga shrieked in horror, seeing it at the same time Natalia did.

Aleksandra gave them all watery smiles. "More will come, you know. You'd better start running and let me pick them off for you. Rifles are loud, and we are dangerous. We're letting their property escape."

Natalia came to her side when she wavered, putting an arm around her shoulders. It occurred to her that she had never been close to Aleksandra, had never given reason for her to save their lives in this way. "Thank you, sister," she whispered, mouth running dry. "We can never repay you for this."

"Yes, you can," Aleksandra said, a fierce tone to her voice. _"Live well._ Let them regret what they have made. Make them all pay."

"I promise you. Whatever it takes, I will do it."

Her grin was like a shark's, and Natalia backed away, nearly colliding with Olga and Ksenia as Yelena helped them up. It would take possibly a half hour or more for Aleksandra to die of her wounds, infection clouding her mind. But there were six minutes left on the timer, and the fires would consume her long before that.

Only four of the Upper Ranks left out of twenty eight girls to escape. Five if Tatiana counted, but she was out there in the world somewhere. She didn't know where Anna, Maya, Elizaveta, and Evgeniya were; their names hadn't even been in the current roster of assignments she had stolen from the mainframe. For all she knew, they could be dead already.

Several hallways away, the girls heard rifle reports and startled yelling from male guards. A few girls screamed in fright. There was no sound from Aleksandra, but she was in her element. She and a rifle had a special connection. She would die doing the thing she loved most in this place, so perhaps it was fitting. Perhaps it wasn't cowardice.

Either way, Natalia had to steel herself to the screams of frightened girls as they broke out of the facility. Little girls all streaming out into the snow, heading toward whatever landmarks they could see. Too many would die this night, no matter what her intentions were.

More lives laid at her feet, but she couldn't think about that. There was still too much to do.

Natalia led the girls into the forest. She remembered being raised by soldiers in the army, falling in love with Nicholai. She remembered his soft touch and gentle kisses, the burning fire beneath her skin as desire rode them hard. She remembered being pregnant, feeling herself grow rounded with child, the men of the battalion sharing rations so the baby could grow. They called it a miracle child, hope for their future, and were as invested in seeing it born as she was. But there was a harsh, vicious battle. Nicholai was killed, most of the battalion slaughtered, and the strain of her wounds led to deliver early; she buried her stillborn daughter in the forest after holding her close, naming her, imagining a different future.

It never happened, but Natalia found herself looking for the grave site, mourning for the daughter that never was.

But remembering this nonexistent past also meant she knew how to survive in a forest. She knew how to track game and build a fire. She knew how to stretch out their meager supplies.

That wasn't enough to save Ksenia. She was too weak and fragile after the procedure in the Odd Hallway. Kudrin's procedure had wiped her clean, the additives in her system clashing and not allowing her to generate enough heat. Even with layers and huddling for warmth at the fire, Ksenia was cold. No fever, no wounds. Just a blank stare at times, stuttering, hallucinating, not tolerating the rations or game that Natalia hunted.

When she died four days later in Olga's arms, Ksenia had a smile on her face.

Natalia buried her in her imaginary daughter's grave, using her bare hands. Yelena had to hold Olga, sobbing and half crazed with grief.

"This is your fault! You picked that night! You let them all out. So now they're freezing to death, too!" she shrieked, spittle flying.

"Would it have been kinder to lock them up and let them burn?" Natalia asked, voice hard and pitiless. "Would it have been better to let the handlers rape and torture them? Go into their minds to play? I remember what they did to me, Olga. Do you? Do you remember who they turned you into? What they had you do for them?"

Olga turned away. "You killed Ksenia."

"No, Olga. Kudrin and the others did."

Yelena shook her head at Natalia. "She won't listen. She doesn't believe you."

"You do, don't you?"

"I don't remember most of what they did," Yelena said softly. "They took it out."

"That's an unexpected kindness."

Startled, Yelena actually backed up a half step. "You know what they did to me."

"What you told me, what I've seen." She took Yelena's arms and looked her in the eye. "It was terrible, Lena. Please trust me, it's a kindness you don't remember it. You don't want to remember it."

"Where do we go now?" she asked, eyeing Olga warily. The girl was muttering to herself, rocking in place where she sat by the fire. "They did something to her, too. I think Ksenia dying broke her mind. Or they put things in to break her."

Natalia nodded. "She'd been feeling sick like Ksenia was. Do you? Do you feel sick?" She did herself, a vague unwell feeling in her gut. "They might have drugged us."

"The food," Yelena whispered, eyes widening in understanding. "Ksenia couldn't eat the rations. Olga was saving hers."

"Feed her," Natalia ordered. "She won't eat what I give her, but she still trusts you."

Olga did eat, and the shivering stopped. Her distrust and unease around Natalia remained, so she warily watched her move around the camp.

"We need to find Tatiana. We know exactly where she went, so it'll be easy to find her. If they gave us some kind of chemical in our food, we need to ensure that she's safe. In the meantime, we can wean ourselves off. Save some for Tati," Natalia said.

"You leave her alone!" Olga snarled. "I won't let you hurt her. You can't kill anyone else!"

Yelena looked to Natalia, a question in her eyes. "I can do it," she said, voice low so Olga couldn't hear her. "Quick and clean. Then we find Tati."

Natalia's throat closed over in pain. "I—"

"She'll scream and rant and rave. She'll say what the plan is just to spite you. We'll never be able to save Tati if you say no."

Natalia covered her face with her hands. "This isn't what I wanted, Lena. We're supposed to be free. They shouldn't have a hold on us."

"They drugged us, changed us, raped us..." Yelena sighed. "Olga can't be trusted. She can't be saved. Not even you can save everyone."

Part of Natalia wanted to try. Why else sacrifice so much? Why else try to save Tatiana?

"Do it," Natalia whispered, then moved away into the woods. She sat in the dark to cry, her sobs ugly and loud, ensuring that she didn't hear how it was done.

She was a monster, selfish and evil, failing even as she tried to do good. Why even try? Why even pretend that she was something she wasn't?

"It's done," Yelena said some time later. Her body showed no sign of how Olga was killed, if it even bothered her a little bit. She even removed the body so that Natalia wouldn't have to.

Unless there was no body, and she hadn't actually killed Olga. The girl was out there in the woods, waiting for the opportunity to kill her. Yelena was conspiring against her. They would bind together and kill her as she slept, would go on to kill Tatiana, would take everything she had worked so hard to accumulate.

She would never let that happen. She simply wouldn't sleep.

And if necessary, she would have to strike first.

"Did you hear me? It's done."

Natalia rose to her feet, her heart encased in ice. Siberia claimed too many lives, too many hearts, too many fragile and weak creatures.

 _You'll break them,_ she once commented to Madame Bolinshinko, looking at the Lower Rank girls in the courtyard drills.

 _Only the breakable ones,_ Madame had replied.

She would not break, would not fail.

Giving Yelena an insincere smile, she walked back toward camp. "Yes, it is."

***  
***


	4. Survival

Suspicious of Yelena, Natalia moved the packaged Zip disks from her backpack to her baggy trousers. She carefully kept them strapped to her thigh and slept on them at night; if she was caught, that data would be her leverage. Former lovers or not, Natalia wouldn't allow Yelena to sell her out.

They made their way across the frozen tundra, spacing out the drugged rations. Both girls felt nauseous and sick, nerves on edge. They stayed silent for most of the trip, dancing around one another. Natalia couldn't trust Yelena, and Yelena didn't seem to trust her either. Withdrawing from some unknown combinations of drugs didn't help the situation.

The two girls slipped into Moscow, where Tatiana had been sent. Natalia could barely even remember why it was so important to find her, to save a few drugged rations for her. Yelena was just as dogged as she was, but Natalia wasn't even sure if she actually remembered why it was so important. She couldn't ask her, couldn't admit weakness, couldn't give Yelena the means to break her. Even when shivering with cold, she refused to seek out Yelena's touch; Yelena seemed to be doing the same things, so she refused to feel bad about it.

Yelena was the one to steal a map of the city while Natalia hunched over in an alley, vomiting and miserable. Their rations were low, and she was saving what was left, however few of them, for Tatiana. Yelena rubbed at her back, touch almost hesitant. "I'm sorry. I don't know how to help. I don't know what they drugged us with."

"You're well," Natalia said, managing to keep the accusing tone out of her voice.

"I feel sick," Yelena disagreed. "I think in a few hours, we'll change places."

Feeling almost contrite – almost, because she wasn't sure if she could trust Yelena anymore – Natalia heaved one more time. "If Tati feels this way..."

"We'll help her through it."

"She doesn't remember... If she doesn't..."

Yelena watched as Natalia heaved and spit bile, groaning in pain. "On some level, she'll know us. I have to believe that."

"Only one way to find out," Natalia said darkly, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand.

Time to find Tatiana.

***

Tatiana was now Karla Elizarova, the girlfriend of a high ranking government official. He was glad to meet one of Karla's friends from her high school, as she didn't usually say much about herself. "We all grew up rough," Natalia replied with an easy smile, introducing herself as Talia Suntsova. Yelena introduced herself as Lika Ioannova.

"She's a little ill," Comrade Grigori Ivanovich told them, ushering them into his apartment. "I was thinking of bringing her to a lovely and warm vacation spot. The dacha is not appropriate for this time of year."

Ugh. Showing off and trying to make them feel stupid. Natalia hated him already. 

"Of course. I apologize for our poor timing. We had only recently been given the day off, and hadn't been able to reach other classmates," Yelena lied.

Grigori nodded and led them toward the bedroom. It was highly familiar, something he normally wouldn't have done with women that were strangers to him, but apparently Karla was that ill that he was making an exception. "Робкий," he called out as he opened the bedroom door. "Your friends from school are here."

Natalia frowned at him. What kind of pet name was that? If she didn't still need him alive to tell her more about what Tatiana had been doing, she would simply call him Дух and be done with it. As it was, she pasted a grateful smile onto her face and sat down near Tatiana. She was curled up on the bed, shivering, a sheen of sweat on her skin. Her eyes seemed wild, like a cornered thing, like she couldn't recognize anything anymore.

Scooting closer, Natalia pushed the hair away from Tatiana's face. "Oh, душенька, you must feel awful."

There was a flicker of recognition in her eyes, but she didn't say anything, not with Grigori standing in the doorway, hovering. When her eyes flicked toward him, she stretched her lips into something that was meant to be a smile but was more of a grimace. "Grisha, water."

He hurried to the kitchen, and Natalia quietly hissed their aliases. "The complex is gone now," she continued. "But they had drugged us. It was through the food there, I'm not sure how they would do it while you're on mission."

Tatiana's eyes narrowed. "If my handler's not here, how are you? How did you find me?"

"Raiding the archives," Natalia replied. Tatiana had never been suspicious of her before. Was this part of the withdrawal? Was this why she hadn't trusted Yelena? Perhaps the little blonde wasn't as hurtful as she had feared.

Yelena shivered, but pulled a portion of the rations out of her purse. "We've been feeling it, too. We saved some for you, to slow this withdrawal down."

Tatiana didn't reach for the ration package in Yelena's hand, even though it was clearly still sealed. Grigori returned, and Yelena had to slip it back into her purse. The look of concern on her face was still there, could be for an ill friend, and the sight of it made her feel ill herself. How long had she mistrusted Yelena for no reason?

She doubted herself now. She couldn't doubt herself. If she did, she would fail.

"There's much illness going around," Grigori said, easing Tatiana into a sitting position for the water. "Take care you don't fall ill as well," he told Natalia and Yelena. "If you'll visit for a time, I can get back to the office."

"How much time do you need?" Yelena asked, sounding sympathetic.

"A few hours, perhaps."

Something was sharp in Tatiana's eyes as she watched Grigori leave. When he left the apartment, she turned to Natalia and Yelena. "He's going to fuck his secretary. If he was more interested in his underlings, my handler would have yanked me out weeks ago."

The other girls nodded; homosexuality was still considered a crime, and that would have given their superiors delicious leverage over him. But alas for the Red Room, Grigori was strictly heterosexual. They would have had to find other means to use him.

"When did you start remembering who you were?" Natalia asked gently.

"The sickness brought it. Dreams at first, then being Karla was a dream." She shivered violently, then glared at Yelena and Natalia. "Why are you here?"

"You're sick because they drugged us. We only figured out what it was when we left. Everything there was destroyed, burned to ashes. We saw the fires from miles away."

Tatiana grit her teeth together and put the glass of water aside, her knuckles white with strain and eyes glittering like chips of ice. "So convenient there's no one left."

Yelena brought out the sealed ration and held it out to her, but Tatiana refused to take it. "We haven't done anything to it. For pity's sake, the damn thing is still sealed!"

"Open it in front of her," Natalia suggested. "Then we each take a piece to show her we didn't poison it and reseal it."

Understanding dawned in Yelena's eyes, and she hurried to do as Natalia asked. Tatiana watched them like a hawk, waiting five minutes in perfect silence to see if they reacted to it. Yelena's shivers stopped, and Natalia felt as though she could breathe a little easier. Convinced that they weren't going to die, Tatiana wolfed down the contents of the package, barely even stopping to chew. "I thought it was Grigori," she mumbled. "I thought he poisoned me to go to that brat at the office. The tart thinks she's a better fuck than me."

Natalia tucked some hair behind Tatiana's ear as she snorted. "I rather think you would've taught that idiot a thing or two."

That startled some laughter out of Tatiana, though she was still tense and eyed the two girls warily. "So the complex is gone. I no longer need to be Karla. But then what? What becomes of us? If not for what they made of us, we are nothing."

"We can be anyone," Natalia replied, voice hard. "We can be anyone we want to be."

"I won't be this," Tatiana replied. "This is not my choice."

Yelena wrapped her arms around herself, nodding. "We hadn't thought that far ahead."

"No need to before," Natalia replied.

"Where are the others?" Tatiana asked in concern. "We can't be the only ones left."

Natalia suddenly didn't want to say that she had killed Nina. Or left her for dead, to burn to death or choke on the smoke. That was as good as killing her right there and then. "Ah..."

"Some died there," Yelena said as Natalia faltered. "Wounded, and stayed behind to pick off the guards that might come. The younger girls... who knows if they survived Siberia? We barely did. Ksenia and Olga didn't."

Natalia suppressed the urge to look back at Yelena incredulously. Olga would have survived it if Yelena hadn't killed her. _If_ Yelena killed her.

Tatiana sighed. "Twenty-eight girls, and now it's down to the three of us. That's all of the Upper Ranks left. Such a waste."

"The handlers are all gone, too. And ancillary staff on base. Everything was locked down, everyone kept inside so they could all burn," Natalia said quietly. "Anyone aware of the place would likely think we burned along with them."

"Until they find the girls in the snow, broken and bleeding and frozen to death," Tatiana said, that hard look in her eyes again. Trust and suspicion warred there, and Natalia wasn't sure which would survive the battle for supremacy.

"We can decide what we want to do now, who we want to be," Yelena said. She frowned, a hand pressed to her belly. "I'm hungry."

"Food in the kitchen. If it was truly the complex staff poisoning us or drugging us, the food in there should be fine," Tatiana told her.

Once Yelena left the room to get food, Tatiana fixed her eyes on Natalia. "What will you do, then? You started this. How will you end it?"

"I don't know. I never had to think that far ahead. I always thought I would be able to discover that with time."

"There are few things we are built for. Could you be an ordinary girl? Could you hide out somewhere and pretend to love a man, let him between your thighs, cry when you're not pregnant with his idiot child? Could you pretend to be unaware of the creatures behind the shadows, the reason why things fail?"

"I don't think you could," Natalia said quietly. "I think feeling had always mattered to you more than me. I think you wanted to believe you could find a way out."

"And now that you've handed it to me, we have nothing to do with it. No plans, unless we whore ourselves out," Tatiana replied in disgust.

"You can be anyone you want, Tati," Natalia said. "Who do you want to be?"

"Who do you want me to be?"

"Someone real," Natalia replied honestly. She knew she would never be able to do that herself; she carried too many names amongst the handlers, too many lives inside her mind, and it wasn't safe to keep her real self exposed. She would rather hide her truth away, buried under so many other selves. It would keep her safe, keep her alive. No one would know the truth, and she could run forever if she had to.

Tatiana laughed, a bitter and ugly sound. "Do we even know what that is anymore?"

"Create her. Be someone new, but someone you choose to be. Not these fragmented things those old men wanted us to be."

"Who would you be? Hm? Which self would you be?"

"The one that survives. The one that wins."

"Surviving _is_ winning."

"Yes, it is," Yelena said from the doorway, yogurt in hand. Clearly she had overheard the conversation, but there had been nothing said that Natalia wanted to hide from her. For the moment, at least, she trusted Yelena. Later might be a different story. Later she might mistrust the blonde, might be concerned that Yelena wanted to kill her and take her place, leave her somewhere to die a lonely and ugly death.

"That's all you're eating?" Tatiana asked.

"Heavy foods still make me feel ill. Whatever they drugged us with, it's a long acting one."

Tatiana considered that, and folded her hands over her stomach. "So I cannot leave Grigori yet, not until I am wholly well. Not until my condition is back to perfect."

"So what will you do in the meantime?"

"Use him, as I was trained to do."

"And after?" Yelena asked.

"Decide for myself what I want." She bit her lip for a moment. "You two never hid what you did in the dorms. I was always jealous of that."

Natalia blinked, not sure why Tatiana would say such a thing. The uncertainty must have been evident, because the girl laughed. "She loves you, Natasha. Why wouldn't I want that? Grigor doesn't love me, he loves the idea of me. He loves owning me, showing me off to his friends, alluding to his prowess. He cares nothing for _me._ Why else wouldn't he realize there was little behind the façade? Why else treat you like honored friends when he just met you, so he can abandon me here while ill?"

"Tati..." Natalia began.

"I cannot go with you," she said after a moment. "Thank you for thinking of me, for helping me with this sickness. But if it's withdrawal, I will suffer through the next few days with the rest of it, make Grigori cater to me. You can't stay, and we shouldn't remain together. Sooner or later, someone will realize what we are, and they will start looking for answers. Grigori will never look, he's too blind to see. So I may regain strength, get a better position to leave. Then when I'm done with him, I can go my own way."

"So this is goodbye, then?" Natalia asked quietly, pain in her voice.

"It must be," Tatiana answered with a slight nod. "That's the best way to be sure that we are all considered dead."

Leaning forward, Natalia pressed a kiss to Tatiana's cheek. "Good luck, Tati. I will miss you."

Tatiana smiled and pulled her in for a hug. "Yes. And I will miss you both."

***

"You don't trust me," Yelena said quietly as they sat in a McDonald's. It was so terribly American, so obviously for tourists. They used English in low voices, ready to say that they were Ellen Decker and Nadine Reed, on vacation together in Moscow. Of course no one asked, but the point was to be ready in case someone did.

Natalia looked up, her face carefully blank but her heart thumping erratically in her chest. "Why do you ask me that?"

"Because you had me open the rations in front of Tati. You told me to take a bite, and so did you. You knew why she didn't trust it, because you didn't trust _me."_

The naked pain in Yelena's voice made her flinch. "I don't—"

"Don't lie. _Please._ Whatever else happens now, please don't lie about this."

"I think it's a side effect. From the withdrawal," Natalia replied quietly, shame in her voice. "In the forest, when... When..."

"Olga," Yelena said, her voice just as quiet.

Natalia could only nod, the food tasting like ashes in her mouth. She no longer had an appetite, but forced herself to continue chewing methodically. Her body needed food, even if her mind rebelled against it. She had to be strong. She had to be tough.

But she felt so _weak,_ so helpless, so dependent. She hated that feeling.

"Because I choked her," she said in Latin quietly. "There was no blood, and I buried her so it would not trouble you. But it did."

"I thought you were working with her so she could kill me. Or that you wanted to," Natalia admitted in Latin. "I was not feeling well."

Yelena looked away, hurt. "I thought you did not love me. And I was right. You cannot love someone you fear."

"Don't we all love what we fear?" Natalia asked, a hopeless note in her voice. "We were told to love our country, to love our comrades, to love the handlers. But then we are told that love is for children and we are above such things." She dropped her eyes to the table, shamed. "But we are not, are we? We have not been children for a very long time."

Reaching across the tiny table, Natalia clasped Yelena's hand. "I am not good. And many times, I don't even feel human. Sometimes I doubt if I feel anything."

She looked at their hands, then up at Natalia's earnest expression. "You do. You just wish you didn't. You want to be the amoral killer they were trying to create."

"And you've always wanted to be the best."

Withdrawing her hand and leaning back, away from Natalia, Yelena's expression shuttered. "So is this goodbye for us, too?" Her voice was flat, as if she was already emotionally dead.

Natalia did this. She was still doing this. She was hurting everything she touched, reducing everything living to nothing but death and the walking dead.

"Do you want it to be?"

"Dammit, I want to know what you want!" Yelena hissed.

"I want to do right by you. I want you to know what it is to want for yourself, to be what you want to be," she replied, eyes flashing, voice intense with her truth.

"And if I just want you to love me?"

"I can't. I don't know how."

Yelena abruptly stood, jaw tight and eyes shining as if she was trying not to cry. "You are a liar, a coward and a fool."

"What are you doing?" Natalia hissed, not wanting to say her true name aloud.

"Live among the dead things, then," she said in Latin, blinking furiously. She half turned, then glared at Natalia. "Keep your useless heart and your isolation. I hope you get everything you deserve." With that, she stalked out of the restaurant and onto the street.

Realizing suddenly that she had broken Yelena's heart with her careless words, Natalia shot to her feet and rushed out after Yelena.

She was already gone, dissolving into the crowds on the street like smoke.

Natalia would never see her again until she wanted to be seen, and it wasn't likely to be a pleasant encounter, not after all of this.

What else could she do? Who else could she be?

Shivers wracked her, the tail end of the withdrawal. This time, she embraced the cold and looked forward to the wracking pain that would come. That was real, that was what she deserved. That was all she could have now.

Picking a random direction, she began to walk, disappearing into the crowd herself.

***

There were many names for her. They called her the Red Death, the Slavic Shadow, the Widow, the Russian Avenger, the Black Widow.

It was fitting, wasn't it? All she had wanted was to have a life outside of the organization that raised her, to be something other than a soulless monster.

But she had a very specific skill set, so she might as well use it. She might as well own up to what she was, and be the thing she was made to be.

The Black Widow.

The End


End file.
